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NYU, Princeton Researchers Chronicle American Business’ Long, Complex History with Government in New Book

June 12, 2012
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Critics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision have pointed to the ruling as a force that has unleashed undue corporate influence on elections and governance. But, in What’s Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II (Oxford University Press), editors Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian Zelizer show how business has mobilized to shape public policy and government institutions, as well as electoral outcomes, for decades.

Phillips-Fein, the author of Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, is an associate professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study; Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

The volume’s essays explore the complex evolution of the business-government relationship in several arenas--from attempts to create a corporate-friendly tax policy and regulations that would work in the interests of particular industries, to local boosterism as a weapon against New Deal liberalism, to the nexus between evangelical Christianity and the oil industry, to the frustrations that business people felt in struggles with public interest groups.

The resulting history shows business actors organizing themselves to affect government in myriad ways--often successfully, but other times with outcomes far different than they hoped for. In the end, the work presents an image of American politics that is more complex and contested than is often perceived.

In "What’s Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II" (Oxford University Press), editors Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian Zelizer show how business has mobilized to shape public policy and government institutions, as well as electoral outcomes, for decades.